Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography (31 page)

“God dammit, Mike, you are going to watch something else besides these fucking cartoons,” he said, and he put on documentaries about Nazi Germany. Don was obsessed with the Nazis. It was Hitler this and Hitler that. He thought that the Jews were the niggas of Germany and that fascism could happen here so we should learn from history.

Richie’s regimen was driving me crazy. One night I woke Rudy up at eight p.m. and we snuck out in my Ferrari and drove to L.A. so I could have a booty call. Rudy gunned that mother up to 190 mph and we made it to L.A. in two and a half hours. So I began doing that regularly and it started to show in the gym. I was operating on only two hours of sleep. Giachetti had no idea why I looked so lackluster, but he finally busted me when he looked at the mufflers on the Ferrari and saw that they looked like burnt marshmallows.

So they made Rudy put alarms on all the doors to prevent me from sneaking out at night.

One night Rudy woke up when he heard a loud thump. He got up, turned on the light, and walked outside and found me tangled up in a thorny bush. I had fallen from a second-story window trying to sneak out of the house. My plan was to silently roll the Ferrari down the driveway and then take off for L.A.

I was so desperate all my life to get out and have some fun. I should have said, “Fuck you all, I’m going out,” but instead I snuck out. I’d be in Nicky Blair’s, my favorite restaurant in Las Vegas, holding court, surrounded by girls, and Don would storm in.

“What the fuck are you doing, Mike?” he’d bellow. “We’ve got a fight coming up.”

“Excuse me, Don,” I’d say. “I would appreciate it if you would just leave. Oh, by the way, girls, this is Don King.”

When my nocturnal speed races to L.A. ended, I had Rudy ship the car to my Ohio house, where they knocked a hole in the exterior wall of my game room and had the car mounted on a platform in the middle of the room so me and my friends could hang out in it.

I went after Ruddock before the fight began. We were doing a taping for Showtime and I wore dark glasses and looked pretty surly.

“I will make you my girlfriend,” I told Ruddock.

“I’m not going to come down to your level,” he said.

“Make sure you kiss me good with your big lips,” I countered.

I was pretty offensive but I knew he was a macho, testosteroned guy. I knew that would get to his psyche. That was one of Cus’s tactics of mind control. Confuse the enemy.

Another reason I kept going to L.A. was because my friend Kevin Sawyer who had the beeper shop would beep me and tell me he had some girls lined up for us. He’d get a half a dozen girls and we’d get a room and have an orgy.

I loved hanging out with Kevin. I was mean and nasty to girls then. So before I got there, he would tell the girls, “Mike is really a nice guy. He just never had a good upbringing. He was abandoned as a kid and he has trust issues.” That shit would work like a charm. I’d call them bitches and sluts and they’d say, “I understand your situation. My parents also abandoned me.” Kevin would tell me, “Just go along with this shit, okay?” Don and John and Rory would get so furious when I’d get beeped. They wound up taking my beeper and putting it in the freezer and then they threatened to kill Kevin.

My second fight with Ruddock was epic. He went into that fight ten pounds heavier. I actually weighed one pound less, but I was weak because I had lost thirty-five pounds in less then a month. I was out of control before the fight, drinking, gorging on food, fucking women. I would get up and sneak out to Roscoe’s in L.A. for fried chicken. So I took fat-burning water pills, and I didn’t eat anything after dark. I’d work out morning, afternoon, and night.

In the second and the fourth round of the fight, I knocked Ruddock down and had him in trouble a number of times, but I just couldn’t finish him off, I was too weak. He was hitting me hard, like a mule, but I was focused. We both got points taken off for hitting after the bell; I had two more points deducted for low blows. It was a war. But I still won an easy unanimous decision.

In July I was hanging out in D.C. when I got a call from my friend Ouie back in New York. An old friend of ours had been shot in D.C. and Ouie was worried that if the wrong people saw me, they might go after me too. I wanted to get off the streets and wait until all the heat had cooled down, so I went to see Whitney Houston perform that night and stayed backstage and hung out with her after the concert.

On my way back to New York, I was passing through Philadelphia and they had the Budweiser Superfest going on at the Spectrum. Craig Boogie was working the show and I was hanging out backstage with him when B Angie B, one of Hammer’s backup singers who was performing there, came up to me and grabbed me. We were hanging out and we slept together that night. Angie then told me that she was going to Indianapolis to perform at the Black Expo. Earlier that day I had received a call from Reverend Charles Williams, who ran the Black Expo, inviting me to make an appearance, so I decided to go and meet her in Indiana.

I was trying to ditch my bodyguards. Anthony was out in L.A. getting ready to get married that week. I told Rudy not to come with me. Rudy called Ant and then Anthony called John Horne and they decided that Dale Edwards should meet me in Indianapolis. Dale was a nephew, either by blood or by marriage, of Don’s. He was a Cleveland police officer.

Dale and I checked into our hotel. Then I had my limo driver drive me over to B Angie B’s aunt’s house. That night we hung out at a nightclub and had three bottles of Dom Pérignon. We walked out on the bill when the house photographer asked me to take a picture. We got back to my hotel at about 2:30 in the morning. Angie and I had sex that night and then again a few times the next morning. Then Angie left to get ready for her performance.

A little bit later, Reverend Williams came to bring us to the Expo. He asked me if I wanted to say hello to some of the girls in the Miss Black America pageant. When we entered the ballroom at the Omni Hotel, the girls went crazy.

“Look – it’s Mike Tyson!” they all screamed.

I walked towards them and they surrounded me, hugging me, kissing me. They were filming a little promotional video, so while the contestants twirled and danced I walked down the line, checking them out, doing some awkward dancing and impromptu singing. “I’m in a dream, day after day, beautiful women in such an array.” I must have looked like a real schmuck.

As the girls surrounded me, I’d say shit to them like, “Hey, I want to see you tonight. Is that possible? Oh, boy, this is going to be fun if you decide to come to my room.” I was being a pig, but they were going for it. I hugged Desiree Washington, one of the contestants, in the middle of the first take of that video and told her that I wanted to get with her later. She was very flirty with me and friendly and she wanted to hang out. I explained to her that I would do some other things and go to the concert with my friends, but I would see her later that night. I even told her to bring her roommate so we could have a ménage à trois in my room. I saw her again later that afternoon at the opening of the Black Expo. She was with her roommate, Pasha, the one I was trying to get to come along with Desiree.

“There’s the two look-alike twins,” I said when I saw them.

Desiree took out some photos of them taken during the swimsuit competition. She seemed anxious for me to see them. And she confirmed that we were on for later that night.

I was being chauffeured around town by this middle-aged black lady who owned the limo company. Dale and I were total assholes to her. We kept calling her a dumb, ugly bitch. I made her stop the limo and I got out and pissed right in the street. I was being a total arrogant dick, and it would come back to bite me when she testified against me.

After the concert, Dale and I got back in the car and called Desiree, who was in her hotel room. I told her to wear some loose clothing and I was surprised that when she got into the car, she was wearing a loose bustier and her short pajama bottoms. We started making out in the backseat. It was only a block from her hotel to mine. We got out of the limo and she and I went to my suite and Dale went to his room.

Later after all the shit had gone down, Anthony was furious with Dale. He blamed him for everything that happened to me in Indianapolis. It was pretty common practice for my bodyguards to stay in the living room of my suites when I had a girl in bed, especially a girl we didn’t know. Many times I’d open up my door after having sex and Anthony would be sitting there. He wanted to be right there, listening to what was going on, in case there was a problem. Sometimes I’d even invite the bodyguards into the room and we’d fuck the same girl.

Desiree came into my room and we went straight to my bedroom. She was sitting in somewhat of a Buddha position and we talked a little bit. She seemed to know all about my pigeon hobby. She talked a little bit about Rhode Island. We even discussed seeing each other again when I was back east.

I’d like to tell you exactly what transpired in that room but U.K. law is so restrictive that I can’t comment on many aspects of my own trial. But you can find out what I testified to if you read the transcripts of my trial.

About a week later, I was in the car with my friend Ouie who was driving. He got a call and his face dropped.

“Fuck, Mike! Our summer is fucked up. Someone said you raped her,” Ouie said with disgust and he threw his phone down.

“What?” I said. I was thinking to myself that maybe I had disrespected one of my street girlfriends and they were playing me.

“Where did this happen?” I asked Ouie.

“Indiana,” he said.

The next day it was on the front cover of every newspaper. Now all these non-talented comedians were doing “Mike Tyson the rapist” jokes. When I saw Don, he was worried.

“Now you need my help, nigga. Your dick got you in trouble now. God dammit, Mike, now you need me.”

We knew that we were facing something serious, so Don went about getting me a lawyer. I really didn’t have any input into the selection of the lawyer or my defense in general. I was used to other people deciding my destiny, whether it was the juvenile court system, Cus, Jimmy, or Don. Don wound up hiring Vince Fuller. Fuller had been Don’s tax attorney and he had gotten him off on a tax evasion charge. Fuller also represented John Hinckley and used the insanity plea to get him an acquittal after he tried to assassinate President Reagan. I don’t know why Don picked Fuller. All I know is that Fuller made over a million dollars to defend me.

I didn’t get along with Fuller from the get-go. Don told Fuller that I was an ignorant nigga. He was a real Waspy arrogant guy, not my type at all. Anybody could see he was a cold fish. He had never tried a criminal case in a county court, and there was no way in the world that he was going to relate to an Indianapolis jury. In fact, no one on his team had ever tried a criminal case that was not in a federal court. I still don’t know why they didn’t let the local homeboy Jim Voyles do more of the work in that trial.

As I’ve explained, I’m not allowed to go into all the details of the case, for legal reasons, but I suggest that you read two books that came out after I was in jail and see what you think. One is by Mark Shaw who is a writer and a former criminal defense attorney and was the legal analyst for my trial for CNN,
USA Today
, and ESPN. The other book is the self-congratulatory-attempt-to-grab-some-headlines book written by the prosecutor in my case, Gregory Garrison. I didn’t pay much attention to my trial as it happened; I was an arrogant young man who couldn’t be bothered with these kinds of proceedings. I didn’t understand them. That’s what I paid those suits for.

There was a lot of interesting insight into the prosecution’s case, reading Garrison’s book. In fact, up until they reached the verdict, key members of the prosecution team didn’t even think they had a case against me. Jeff Modisett, the elected prosecutor of Marion County, won his office by just 285 votes out of 180,000. The only district he carried was the black district. He was no schmuck. He didn’t want to alienate his base, so he decided not to charge me with a crime; instead he would send my case to a grand jury to let the “people” decide if a crime had been committed.

I had to testify before the grand jury on the thirtieth. Well, I didn’t have to. In fact, Jim Voyles was begging Vince Fuller NOT to have me testify. There was no upside to my testifying. The only thing it could do was give the prosecution ammunition to come after me with during the trial. But somehow Fuller and Don convinced themselves that I should go before the grand jury.

“This man is innocent. Mike Tyson says he’s innocent. He’s testifying because I think that’s what we’re supposed to do,” Don bellowed on the courtroom steps in front of all the media that day. “I’m going to let due process take its course. I’m not an attorney, I’m just a promoter of the greatest fighter in the world, and he’s going to win the championship in the fall.”

I was facing a long stretch in jail and he was promoting my damn fight with Holyfield that was scheduled for November. Only in America.

They had me dress in a very conservative dark blue double-breasted suit. We were brought to a small room with a noisy window air conditioner. There were six jurors there. Five of them were white. They asked me questions and I answered very softly and the court reporter made over a hundred errors in her transcription.

At one point they asked me if Dale Edwards had been in the parlor of my suite. I said he was. Dale had testified he was. That’s where he was supposed to be. I couldn’t know for sure because the bedroom door was closed.

To indict me they needed five out of six votes. We took a recess at one point and I had been eyeing this large candy bowl that was in the middle of the table that the jurors had been eating from.

“Could I have a piece of candy, please?” I asked.

“Sure,” they said. And the one black lady handed me the candy.

On September ninth, the grand jury began deliberations. The vote was 5–1 to indict me for rape. I was indicted on one count of rape, two counts of criminal deviate conduct (using my fingers and using my tongue), and one count of confinement. I faced sixty years in jail. My trial was scheduled to start on January ninth.